(The following is an excerpt from my book, Prelude to a Super Airplane. It can be purchased by clicking on any of the roughly 400 banners adorning this site, or by clicking here. It’s also available on Amazon.
I’ve posted the first 20 chapters (roughly 55 pages of PTSA) on this site. Links to each of those are at the end of this post, or you can download all of them as a pdf by clicking here.
The Actoring Hat is probably my favorite hat to wear in the entertainment industry.
There are lots of reasons for this, but most of them come down to more money, more girls, and more fun. Now, a singularly unique actor is difficult to cultivate, which is why people trying to do actoring should perfect the two techniques I use in my work.
The first of these techniques is to not blink at all after the director screams ‘action’.
The second technique is something I call the “slow head turn to camera, with an angry/confused/amazed-to-be-in-this-situation squint, dramatic and slow head turn”. This isn’t an easy maneuver to execute, but the good thing is you can practice this in your real life, even when you’re not doing your actoring. It looks that natural.
What you need to do is slowly turn your head toward the camera (or mirror, or friend), while putting an angry and confused and amazed-to-be-in-this-situation squint in your eyes. Make sure to do it slow.
Other than that, doing actoring is as simple as pretending to be a person you’re not in real life, and then saying words in front of a camera. Ironically, my favorite actoring performance I’ve ever done was executed in real life.
It took place at an airplane station, where I actored that I was the ghostwriter for the best selling author in the history of These United States of America. This was funny, because at the time, I’d never written a book before, and had to make everything up as I went along. (In actoring, we call this “doing improv”.)
The whole reason I did this was because while I love the airplane station, the last twenty minutes before you get on the airplane are awful. You’ve surely been there, inside this strange game you play with your fellow airplane riders. There’s lots of tension, and positioning, and et al, etc.
You try your best to not sit directly next to anyone, and if you do, you hope dearly that they’re not your airplane seatmate once you’ve boarded the airplane.
Since you didn’t talk to them out there, you don’t want to have to exchange that, “oh geez, it’s you…” look.
(To great effect, I’ve used my “slow head turn to (airplane seatmate) with an angry/confused/amazed-to-be-in-this-situation squint, dramatic and slow head turn” for this before.)
Anyway, back to my actoring story, which actually just took place last week. As I waited to board an airplane ride at LAZ, the main airplane station in Los Angeles, a young woman named Jennifer Cormier had sat down next to me.
Jennifer was good-looking, and athletic, and under the age of 25, with a cutesy pop/rock singing voice and dark brown hair – Jennifer Cormier was everything that scared and excited me in a woman. She was also way too talkative for the airplane station, which is why I dismissed her as my soul mate immediately.
When I say she was too talkative, I mean it. She talked to everyone, especially me, I assume because we were sitting right next to each other.
“I’m going here. What’s there to do there? Is there anything historical there to go see? I’m a fitness model of some note in the fitness modeling industry. I like cookies.”
Because her fitness modeling stories conflicted with her enjoyment of cookies, I decided that Jennifer Cormier was lying, and as such, concocted my own tale – the one about being a ghostwriter for the best selling author in the history of These United States of America.
We both enjoyed our web of lies, and got on the airplane, never to speak again.
After taking my place in seat A1, I felt a tap on my deceptively muscular shoulder.
Of course, it was Jennifer Cormier, and she was to sit next to me on the airplane ride. Jennifer Cormier was my airplane seatmate.
Yes, her name was Jennifer Cormier, and against all odds, she actually was a fitness model of some note within the fitness model industry. She showed me her fitness-modeling portfolio, a few articles from the fitness modeling online internet gossip blogs, and other evidence. After awhile, I came to terms with the cookie enjoying conflict that had bothered me so much before.
Because I didn’t want her to think I was a liar, I stuck with my story about being the ghostwriter for the best selling author in the history of These United States of America, and we spent the next four hours together.
By the time the airplane ride ended, we’d fallen deeply in love.
Brad Radby’s Foreward, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 31
Other Ways To Volger Me
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